Media in Latin America: A Path Forward

"...a coalition of a dozen leading media watchdog organizations and NGOs [non-governmental organisations] that participated...issued a declaration calling on Latin America's governments to take concrete steps to guarantee freedom of expression and plurality of voices in the media."

This report is a summary of the discussion and the findings from a conference held in Bogota, Colombia, in November 2015 as part of an effort to foster more discussion about how independent media around the world can best be supported. This regional consultation was the first in a series of gatherings organised by the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) and Deutsche Welle Akademie (DW Akademie), the media development arm of the German international broadcaster, to gather together media stakeholders to listen to what people on the ground and from a variety of sectors have to say about the problems for media in each region of the world and investigate what can be learned in one place that might be applicable in another to improve the media environment. The hope is that, through these consultations, political actors, regulators, civil society, journalists, and media owners can help create the political will required to build and support country-level movements for reform of the media sector.

The 2-day conference brought together more than 130 civil society and media watchdog NGOs, broadcast regulators, academics, media industry representatives, officials from government ministries, and others in the media and development sectors. On Twitter, the conference registered a reach of nearly 20 million people. After 2 days of meetings, participants discussed and prioritised more than a dozen challenges to the media environment in Latin America and grouped them under 3 main headings, which stood out as relevant to all countries of the region:

• Concentration of ownership - "...not only by authoritarian governments in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela, and Cuba, but the increasingly rapid monopolization of the media by powerful private sector players almost everywhere else. Concentration of media ownership leads to a stifling of voices and lack of diversity of coverage. And when the media owners are in league with business and political elites it can serve to disenfranchise citizens and help entrench those elites in power..." Participants offered some nuanced takes on the issue of concentration, with one suggesting that concentration is not bad per se and another proposing, along those lines, that we speak of "undue concentration".
• Regulation - including issues related to censorship, lack of independence of public media, and lack of autonomy and independence of regulators. "Among the problems that effective and transparent media regulation could address is, in fact, concentration of ownership....That by itself, however, would not necessarily lead to more diversity and plurality of voices."
• Sustainability - not only meaning the economic health and viability of news media properties but also new investment in digital and mobile delivery of news and information, maintainence of an open and competitive marketplace that allows new entrants to gain a foothold, and efforts to address threats and physical violence against journalists in the region. "One area that has been a bright spot for media in Latin America has been the rise of investigative news sites...[that] are producing quality journalism in the public interest at a fraction of the costs incurred by traditional media houses."

Reflecting on these issues and thinking strategically, participants described "an unprecedented process of mobilization of citizens in the sphere of media reform....The bad news is that civil society is not united in this process." Successes that have occurred may be attributed to the formation of coalitions, fostered by forums such as this Bogota meeting, that can garner support from elites or seize political opportunities. International debates about media should be multi-stakeholder affairs driven by those on the ground, with the private sector, the public sector, and civil society having seats at the table. South-South collaboration and learning is also important.

One month after the conference, a coalition of a dozen leading media watchdog organisations and NGOs that participated issued a declaration calling for governments to combat "monopolies, oligopolies, and undue concentration" of the media. It also calls for establishing international standards for freedom of expression and public policies that will allow governments to "democratize and reverse the media systems already concentrated". It argues that the process of digitalisation of radio and television should "not result in a consolidation or amplification of concentration but [rather present] an opportunity for greater pluralism and diversity in our countries."

Going forward, CIMA's and Deutsche Welle Akademie's strategy is to take the findings from these regional consultations to the international donor community, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and private foundations, as well as to the United Nations (UN) discussions of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals....The hope is that donors will use these findings to shape their agendas so as to reflect what the media stakeholders at the country and regional level actually say they need in the way of support, rather than impose top-down media development assistance."

Click here for the 12-page report in PDF format in English.
Click here for the 8-page report in PDF format in Spanish.